What Might Happen To Your Music After You Die (and What You Can Do About It)

The InterPARES Project is a major international research initiative based in Canada in which archival scholars, computer engineering scholars, national archival institutions and private industry representatives are collaborating to develop the theoretical and methodological knowledge required for the permanent preservation of authentic records created in electronic systems. The resulting 5015.2 standard is now being used by the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency to certify RMA vendors. This deals primarily with active records and data.

The second phase of the University of British Columbia-based project was intended to address the long-term preservation of inactive electronic records (i.e. records which are no longer needed for day-to-day business but which must be preserved for operational, legal or historical reasons). Some of the issues embedded in these reports available from their comprehensive Web site include: Authentication (signatures); third party digital time stamp (for verification); tagging, codifying, numbering data; administrative, other contexts under which documents were created; technological context of storage (hardware, software, operating system, many more criteria); formats of the data itself (text, graphic, image, sound).

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NewMusicBox, a multimedia publication from New Music USA, is dedicated to the music of American composers and improvisers and their champions. NewMusicBox offers: in-depth profiles, articles, and discussions; up-to-the-minute industry news and commentary; a direct portal to our internet radio station, Counterstream; and access to an online library of more than 57,000 works by more than 6,000 composers.